


Dishabille

by kalliel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Codependency, Coercion, Demonic Possession, Episode: s02e14 Born Under a Bad Sign, Episode: s06e10 Caged Heat, Heavily Narrativized Existences, Horror, Isolation, M/M, Mental Coercion, Misinformed Drug Use, Possession, Rape Aftermath, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Coercion, Soulless!Sam POV, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 12:24:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1605059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/kalliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Possession doesn't end with an exorcism. Possession is cinders. And it will burn you down. </p><p>Meg-lubricated Sam/Dean, Dean/Soulless!Sam. From post-2x14 "Born Under a Bad Sign" to 6x10 "Caged Heat."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dishabille

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tebtosca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tebtosca/gifts).



> **Please heed these warnings:** rape, [partner rape](http://www.rainn.org/get-information/types-of-sexual-assault/partner-rape)(?), internalized rape apologism, erotic codependence, isolation, torture, coerced/misinformed drug use, brief mention of vaginal disfigurement

So you're missing some of Sam's baggage. His soul, namely. But with the elephant out of the room, there are plenty of little treasures to unpack.

 

\--

 

It's safer on the road. 

 

Bobby offers them his floor, but it's only a Samaritan gesture--at least, Dean's convinced they can't stay. They brought a demon on his house, and as far as that goes in repaying the month they'd already spent on his floor, plowing through his pain meds, using his yard, not being sociable, and bringing the sodden memory of their father into a house where it is not welcome, it's not good. They are not family. And anyway, they should find Jo; she wouldn't want to get forgotten. That's what Dean tells Bobby. He's the kind of driven that doesn't stop for answers, and between that and Steve Wandell, Sam's happy to oblige. That and he still remembers Jo's wrists in his hands, the grease in her hair. She needs to know that he would, Sam would, never ever hurt her.

But they don't go find Jo. It's years before they even speak to her again and even then it's an accident. It's safer on the road, alone. It just is, says Dean. It's gonna be okay, says Dean, and they drive.

Sam feels decentered, tachycardic, a little high. Something about Dean sitting there beside him makes concern drop out and it doesn't matter what he's leaving behind so long as Dean's right there. Dean lets the windows down, even though it's night, and still basically winter. The rush of wind matches the blood in Sam's ears and Dean takes in a great breath of it and only winces a little. 

Sam traces the tremor along Dean's jaw. It's tight and dark and there's no moon but for a while there's downtown, feral yellow neon, danube blue (calm) and flashes of red Dean won't stop for. Then downtown peters out it's just the headlights kicking up against the fog and losing. Just enough to make out Dean's outline.

Sam feels the cold in his teeth and his knuckles. His pulse races but he doesn't want to show it. And Dean doesn't want to see it. "It's okay," Dean repeats, though to Sam the words are just a fluttering to Dean's shadow, his jaw moving.

Sam wants that jaw in his hands and he wants his mouth over Dean's. Nothing is okay.

This is where Sam's memory goes south on you, like an eaten cassette. Too many playthroughs, maybe:

It's gonna be okay, man, Dean tells Sam--tells you. He strips away the world outside of him and you, you and him, by driving due north into the dark, by putting miles between you and the last streetlight, the last highway callbox, and the last of anyone who'd notice if you two went missing. 

The point, in the end, is to go missing.

 

Sam doesn't remember much of himself that night. His body's not a part of this; it's spent too long under someone else's spell and it's still not his yet. Whenever he takes it back--if he does--that time is not tonight. But when Dean jerks back you imagine Sam's body pushing toward him. A hand, maybe. Dean jerks away and you imagine your body as impetus. Sam's body.

"Slow your roll," Dean cautions. He directs them back onto the right side of the road. They swerve again, which means Sam must reach again. His tone turns you (turns Sam) cold.

He must hate you.

Hundreds of miles into the dark and that's all Sam gives you--Dean must hate you (both).

Dean gives you a quick study and turns back to the road.

"Okay," he says. It's not _it's okay_ anymore, you notice. 

"Okay," Dean says again. Then reality snaps.

"Pixie cut's in with the college brats these days, huh?" he says. It's a tone of voice he's never used with Sam before, never mind the rest.

"You got any siblings?" Dean continues. "'Cause I gotta tell you-- _twins_."

"What the hell, Dean."

"Hey, just being upfront." He's speaking a little too loudly, over the wind, or maybe, Sam thinks, over barroom clatter. Just because Sam's never been on its receiving end doesn't mean he's unfamiliar. Spikes of memory: Lacquered wood covered in a thousand lonely finger prints / music running; no one notices the tune but everyone'd know if it stopped playing / breasts, women, chins (Dean's got a thing)--in that order. A certain vicious charm.

Sam knows this. It's not his brother, but it's Dean Winchester all right. And Dean Winchester's taking him home tonight.

 

"Easy, sister. Car comes with the commentary. You don't like it, you can pick your ass up and put it right back on the frontage road." 

(Does Sam jump? You think maybe he does. You wouldn't, but maybe Sam does. Sam may not be at home in his body tonight but that laciniate shudder doesn't give a damn. You feel his panic jump from his groin to his heart.)

Sam's not prepared for this. In that moment, Sam stops thinking about Meg--or thinking _as_ Meg--because no really Dean, _what the hell._ Two hundred miles deep in North Dakota is really not the time to start treating Sam like a hitchhiker.

 

"What're you coming all the way out here for, anyway?" Dean asks, oblivious to or uninterested in Sam's protestations. 

The grin Dean gives Sam in the dark is hungry. Flattering. Horrifying. Horrifying(?)

Whatever it is--aggressive, a little domineering, just enough vulnerable thrown in to sweeten the pot--it's tempting. Dean fills the car with an energy you just wanna respond to on reflex, and christ, Sam gets it now.

Then he chokes on the realization. "Dean, what the hell--"

"You never answered my question. What you doin', coming all the way out here?" Dean cuts in. "Nothing to find for a hundred miles."

 

Maybe he does hate you. But he looks a little sad.

"Or no one to find you," says Sam, and tries to play along. Oblivion is safety; Dean's safety. He tries to pick his way through Dean's riddle of strangers and safewords and get back on the take. He could be that girl, he thinks. That girl who is dozens of girls. They could be alone and happy to be that way.

But there are other memories here too, halftone imbrications from earlier evenings. Thrash metal tinny in someone else's headphones. Transit station. Meg, from--she never said. Meg from Hell. Steve Wandell's blood on his hands, then in his mouth. The rush of red-hot want. It's a testament to how little awareness Sam has of himself in this moment, because even retarded by hindsight--sludge-like, a memory--it takes you by surprise, too.

But Dean must see it coming, because the dirty charm zeroes out and the car goes cold again. There's no trace of recognition in Dean's eyes when Sam meets them. It's not Sam to him anymore, but the fantasy comes down, too. There's a blankness between them. 

"Stop the car," Sam says. His words are boneless.

Stop the fucking car, Dean. (It stops.)

Dean won't look at him.

"Dean, I'm not, I can't--"

"Don't you say a fucking word," Dean snaps. Softer: "Don't talk." Softer still, soft like maybe it's just in Sam's head, maybe it's a wish, an addendum, an editorial hindsight: _Please._

 

He unlocks the door and steps into the night. The wind in the trees sounds like the ocean. "No one's gonna hear you screaming," Dean says to the darkness. 

He keeps his back to the car, and he throws his gun to the back seat. And he waits.

The point, in the end, was to go missing.

 

Maybe Dean's body started losing out to its damage, or maybe for a moment, he hoped (had he hoped--?). Because Sam still takes him by surprise. He goes down mannequin easy, and he doesn't get back up. Just lets Sam drag his face against the asphalt, snatch his jeans away from his hips, his own belt sibilant in the quiet empty of some North Dakota highway. And he does scream. He takes it up the ass, and he screams. Disarticulated insults, assurances, irrelevances. Mostly, he just screams. Not because it hurts, though of course it must. He just screams, and he sounds like a gull facing off against the roar of the the ocean. No one hears him. Maybe Meg.

 

It wasn't you, Dean tells Sam the next morning. They wake up in the Impala, halfway down a runoff ditch, like she's limped from the highway as far as she might. Dean's shaky; he thinks he might run them off the road on accident, he rambles, so they stay in the ditch. 

Sam harbors no doubts: Dean would kill them both right now if he could. 

There's a thin layer of frost on the gun in the backseat.

They stay in the ditch. Sam doesn't trust his own hands, either.

You're still working her through your system, Dean says. It wasn't you.

"She's not here," says Sam. "There wasn't a hitch-- I don't know what you were-- There wasn't--" 

"I know what fucking happened," says Dean. "I'm not crazy. I know what--"

It wasn't you, Dean explains. Dean decides. Then he passes out. Sam's mind fills with the fantasy of painkillers, the magical cure-all of prescription medication, but they burned through that some time ago. To compensate, Sam runs his hand through Dean's hair. He tries to let Dean know that he is loved, but mostly he thinks about Jo's hair, and Jo's wrists, and then Dean's hands, red from cold and red from blood and powdered ash gray by the scuff of the asphalt. He'll be digging grit out of his palms for weeks. The skin will grow over before he finishes. And the rest will linger.

Sam runs his fingers through Dean's hair and dreams a bar stool dream. Whiskey sour, her favorite. A night like any other night, and any other lay. No funny business.

But no, it's Sam. Sam and Meg, like a half-finished pattern waiting to be realized.

 

When Dean comes to, he's changed his mind. It was you. It was you, Sam. (god he must hate you, he must hate you)

No, it was Meg. Or maybe it was you, but you didn't have a choice.

Then just "Sam," he says, and doesn't throw down one way or the other. Eventually he lands on "it's okay." If it wasn't he wouldn't have let it happen. 

He'd have told Sam to stop. He'd have fought. He wouldn't have let it happen if it wasn't okay. That's what Dean says. Then he says it again. And again, until it sounds like the rain whisking over the windshield. "Not me," he says. "That doesn't happen to me."

Sam says nothing. He watches the raindrops swallow each other as they streak his window.

"Hey, are you listening to me?" 

Sam nods. But apparently this is an inadequate, or imperfect, response.

"Right," says Dean. 

Then Dean kisses Sam's neck to better prove exactly how okay it must have been. How okay it still is, and would be. It's okay, he says again. It's okay, it's okay. 

No one ever told him that repetition is the tool of storytellers. Truth doesn't have to repeat itself.

"But it could if it wanted to," Dean insists. Dean wants. Dean wanted. He kisses Sam again. He hypothesizes taking a shit, and decides against it. Dean's known a lot of pain in a lot of places, but this is a new one. 

He kisses Sam again.

 

Sam has no answers for anyone.

 

"What are you talking about?" Dean responds, when two weeks later Sam suggests they check on Jo. There's still a bullet wound in his shoulder, sure, and tarry shit sealed into his palms, but often he forgets about that, too. It's as though the whole ordeal never happened.

It never happened.

Dean's heart surges under Sam's touch as Sam attempts to dress his wounds. Sam's heart matches pace, a percussive dialogue they never really translate. 

"You remember being in Duluth, right? And Jo." Sam asks instead. Sam tries his best to clean the bullet wound with what they have. "And you remember--" 

Driving off into the Badlands. "With me--"

"Don't understand why this shit doesn't just heal already," Dean says, instead of answering. But non sequitur's always been his favorite response. 

When Sam tries to speak again, Dean seizes him with a look that's ready to kill. Then it breaks down, and Sam could scream, because _fight back, Dean. Do it. Hurt me._ Sam just wants to burn this out of them, expose it like a monster and drag it out back.

 

But "It wasn't you," Dean says, when it's been yet another week, and still nothing's healed. The bullet hole is scarring nicely, however. 

Dean picks at the pink scabs on his chin and cheek, from the asphalt; and Sam's face is looking better, too. Neither any longer show their bruises. They can now enter diners without being judged.

Sam's just ordered fajitas when Dean launches himself over the table and kisses Sam like he's on a holy crusade, and Sam is a relic of God. Sam learns the hard way that, if sober, Dean's a biter. 

Flustered, Sam shoves Dean back. They sit in the diner. They are probably being judged.

"It wasn't you," Dean says again.

Sam wonders if Dean realizes that all his kisses only make it feel like yes, yes it was.

But it's okay. It's okay because you don't understand Sam you don't understand it has to be. It has to be.

 

Dean becomes impossible to talk to. Dean's memories become impeccably managed. Dean and Dean's delusions become insufferable. They kill a dozen different monsters, but that night is never one of them.

They take down a Trickster. Bobby saves their asses, but he never does find out what they were fighting about. 

They wander into California after that, the long way around, through the Sierras, on highways where too many people have gone missing. 

When they hit the South Bay, Sam half-wonders if Dean's planning to leave him there. If only Madison hadn't had to die.

 

It's months later, after the djinn, Dean a few pints lighter than he should be, and proportionately light-headed, when Dean rounds back to "It's okay." You're checking his pulse, checking for shock symptoms (that is, Sam is. But it's your fingers that remember). Dean pulls your head in close, like he's letting you in on a secret, but he just coughs into your hair (Sam's hair) and you can feel his lips against your scalp. Slowly you let your cheek rest against his shoulder. Dean restarts a conversation he and Sam had failed to start months ago. He is very matter of fact.

Because let's be real about his, he says The whole thing had been the approximate tone and duration of a lot of his relationships, so he figures either they all counted or none of them had. And there were classes of pride that supersede the "never fucked by my brother" kind. So hell, it was more than okay. And why stop there.

"How does blood loss make you so fucking horny?" (Keep it light.)

"Precious resources, man. They divert themselves to whatever's most important."

"Not your brain, apparently." (Keep it light.)

Keep it light, Sam screams at himself, and they do. They have a good night. When you imagine Dean's lips on Sam's cock, that memory belongs to this night. 

It's not what you're thinking; it's a lukewarm performance. Dean's lost a lot of blood. There's a girl in the hospital who might be dying. There's Sam wishing Dean would take revenge, somehow purge this, throw Sam against the ground, tit for tat. But Dean doesn't. They have a good night, in a manner of speaking. But it's deliberate the way set pieces are, and a little overprecious. 

So what, Dean later insists. You don't fall in love. You work for it. That's what they're doing, that's all. They just took the long way around, because when don't they. It's okay, Sam. Work with me here.

Still, he's the one calling you--calling Sam--"Carmen."

"Dean," Sam says, but Dean refuses this apology. He closes his lips over it and swallows. They're not gonna call Bobby. And no, not Jo. Not Ellen. They're gonna go it alone, or not at all. Then he takes Sam for a drive, a few hundred miles into oblivion. It's safe out there.

"It's just you and me, Sam."

 

\--

 

"Meg kissed me." They're living at the hospital because they don't have the money to go anywhere else. Bobby's not there to offer up his floor this time; he has other concerns. No one's slept. Dean hasn't brought this up in over two years; last year, Sam was sleeping with Ruby, and the year before, Dean was sleeping with everyone. But they haven't slept now, period, and it just slips out.

"Mmm?"

"I said, Meg kissed me."

Sam asks if she did anything else. Even you can taste Sam's panic, its gray, salty wash over skin of this memory. Sam remembers this moment in the profile of Dean's jawline, and the writhing in his own stomach, somatic synecdochic flashbulbs. Well, did she? Sam asks. "Did she?"

"Besides knife the shit out of Bobby? No, Sam, she didn't."

"She didn't."

"No."

"No, I mean, she didn't knife Bobby. Bobby knifed Bobby. She didn't do that." 

"Fuck, Sam, she doesn't need a public defender." Dean's jonesing for a knock-down fight, but they're both too tired to find the appropriate trigger. There's no fight. Just words.

There's so much Sam wants to tell Dean about possession, because Dean doesn't know a damn thing. He doesn't understand. And if the Apocalypse is gonna go down the way Zachariah thinks it will, he needs to know. But after all this time, Sam still isn't sure how to start.

"Are ribs supposed to ache like teeth?" Instead, he talks just to talk. He has their X-rays in his hands and he gets the impression the Enochian on their ribs isn't thrilled to be there. They're not worth protecting. 

"That's called a panic attack, Sam," Dean answers without skipping a beat. But he's not even looking at Sam, and his tone is unusually academic. Sam shot shit, and Dean shot back; it's just a disinterested volley, and it's not good enough. 

"And you know that because of what, Dr. Sexy?" says Sam. 

"Because of you, Sam." Something in Dean's expression rises and falls. Then it's gone.

Sam's ribs ache.

 

"So she kissed you," he redirects. "That doesn't mean--"

"No, I'm just saying. She kisses a lot like you do."

 

Dean never seriously asks Sam to weigh in. He's afraid Sam's opinion. All it really take is one truism from Sam, and everything comes crashing down. Everything will come crashing down. One look from Sam halts the Apocalypse, after all, and that's God's Word, not just Dean's.

Even you don't know what Sam thinks. Going through his head, it's like the answer key's been clipped out. You approximate by measuring Dean. You interpolate. You try to find Sam in the ricochet.

"Whatever. This is ours, Sammy," Dean says. "Meg can go fuck herself."

They don't tell Bobby, because Meg fucked him and Dean knows it's their fault. They don't tell Ellen, and they don't tell Jo, because they're both dead, because Meg fucked them too. 

But it's not Meg's fault. It's theirs. His. Yours. 

You and him, Sam, you're movers. You're not fate, and you're not prophecy. You're not someone else's mindfuck. If that means it's all your fault, at least it was your own idea.

"Come here," Dean says, when Sam finds out about Brady, and coercion, and Jess. "Hey, come here."

It must hit close to home for him. Dean nips Sam's neck and peels back layers, and he tells him it's okay.

You're in love, you're in love, you're in love. This is free will.

 

\--

 

Maybe the rest is Castiel's fault. The retinal burn of his fingers in Meg's hair, her hollow gasp as he pins her to the wall and tongues the back of her throat. She kisses back. And Dean's right, you think. She does kiss a lot like Sam. You've moved your body to the rhythm of similar muscle memories. 

You would never have wanted it if Cas hadn't made it look so good. The rest is all his fault.

 

Sure, before Cas enters the picture at all, Meg's already in your sights, teasing memory. Teasing want. But you never would have put two and two together if he--

 

("Makes a girl wet thinking about you two, you know," Meg whispers into Dean's hairline. She has a knife to his throat and her crotch in his lap, and you watch. She asks him if they've been having their fun, when they're not turning tricks for Crowley. She asks him if he missed her. And she asks about Sam, as though you aren't there in the room with them. As though she knows you aren't. Or he isn't. She's a demon; she must know how empty you are inside.  
"Alive and kicking without you, Meg," Dean assures her, in answer to a question you don't quite catch. But he goes hard under her anyway, and she smiles. Lets her fingers spider over the seam of his pants as she leaves him. But that's it. That's where it ends. You're all business. You call Meg's bluff, you name her fear, and you take control of the situation.

 

You're the job.)

 

 

You catch up with Dean in time to see Meg naked. Dean undoing her bindings. Dean throws a rag over her scissored crotch and she says, "Please. I wouldn't waste my modesty on you."

Dean registers your presence for a half-second, long enough to determine that you're you. There's a blankness there. If you'd been Sam, you think, he wouldn't have needed to look. Where was all that searing attention now, you think.

"'Dean Winchester's behind you'?" Dean parrots, humoring Meg and ignoring you. Her bonds are tight. He leans in closer. "That your fantasy, Meg?"

"Oh, I'd top," says Meg. "But you're still a legend back in Hell, you know."

Sam hadn't known. But you, you know now. And you think about that.

Dean grabs Meg's thin white arm and jerks her to standing. That's the end of it. But your vision goes stroboscopic, and you catch their in-betweens like negative reliefs. In the emptiness between them you watch their mouths close over one another, hands winnowing, a quickie in the doorway to another world. Innuendoes in black and white.

Dean lets go of Meg when he's sure she won't fall. His fingers leave budding bruises. Oh, Dean hates her. But still, there's a faint resonance in her, and it screams _Sam._ It screams Steve Wandell, and it screams Jo, and it screams, Dean, I'm twenty-three years old, I'm your baby brother, and you have to make this right.

 

Well, you tried, Dean. Hell if you didn't try.

 

Get dressed, Dean says to Meg. 

"You," he says to you. You're not Sam to him anymore. He sees more of Sam in Meg than he's ever seen in you, and you know to him you are not Sam anymore. There's a lot of things he's done trying now. "Devil's trap. Now."

 

It's a good Devil's Trap, and a bad plan. Crowley's useless. Meg, suspiciously incompetent. You think it's suspicious, anyway.

"There's still a part of Sam in me," Meg whispers to Dean's shoulder, after. "All mixed up in all my other bits." Stretched out. Fire-damaged. Brittle at the edges. "But it's better than nothing, isn't it?" 

Better than that one, she means. Meaning you.

That's the clincher, really. _There's still a part of Sam in me_ , and Dean takes what he can get. Whatever he can salvage. It won't matter what he has to do to keep that alive, or what it becomes.

Dean's grip tightens on the knife, and by this time Meg's learned when she's overstayed her welcome. She steps back. But it doesn't keep her from suggesting, "Or maybe there's just a part of me in Sam."

"Do you want me that bad, bitch?"

"Please. I wanna swallow the whole damn world, Dean."

Then she's gone. But if history's to judge, Meg never really leaves. No matter how many times Dean says no, when you kiss you can feel the buzz of her in both your lips. Sam always has. He's never said anything, but you're less careful with Dean's fantasies, you think. Aren't you? You are.

But maybe not. The point, in the end, is to go missing together.

 

"We can make this work, Dean."

"Sure, Sam."

"We can."

"Uh huh."

Bobby's floor. Same couch, same carpet from Day One. Dean's teeth catch the porch lamp glare, yellow, and he comes down like a shadow. Knee in your crotch; elbow pinning your forearm, releasing all your tendons. Infrastructures of pain light up. It's all a collapse of limbs, unfinished and harsh in ways that scream strangers more than lovers. It doesn't matter, though, because you want him. Tonight Dean bucks the pattern of memory. He leads. He digs in, pitches sideways, and opens his mouth. He smiles his stranger's smile at the same time he promises, it's just you and me, Sammy. It'll only ever be you and me. You want that, right? 

You do.

Dean invites you in by extending his tongue. There's a small white tablet on the tip of it. Come on Sam, I got you a present, he says without speaking. And you think, if you weren't Sam, he would have needed to use words. So you kiss, and with your tongue you feel the cross-score. 

"Swallow." Dean sinks. His calluses scratch down your sides and his mouth finds your dick. He plays, but doesn't bite. He doesn't break your gaze until he sees your throat convulse. But you're not Carmen, and you're not Meg. Sammy, he says, Get ready for a whole new you.

This is how it's supposed to be. All those times before, they'd been rough shit. This is how it's supposed to be. You feel the sweat at the bottom of your feet.

"Good drugs?" you ask.

"Great drugs."

You smile. This is Dean, in love with you. Ecstatic love. This is a whole new Dean. Sam never had this, you think. You do, though. You do.

But the rest is a rushed orgasm, ten minutes, and Dean leaving you partly through the next. Even though you're not Carmen. 

(He's clothed too quickly.) 

Even though you're not Meg.

(He's finding his keys.) Half-hard, you follow him. This whole new Dean, you follow him.

This whole new Dean, he's leaving you.

"What the fuck, Dean."

"Goin' to the doctor's." 

"For what?" (he must hate you)

Something in Dean breaks. His anger breaks. The fantasy breaks. 

He doesn't hate you. Or he doesn't hate Sam, in any case. He is desperately in love with Sam, in ways that rekindle the meaning of desperate.

"For what?" you repeat.

"Morning after pill." Take two: "None of your fucken business." And three: "Remember Doc Roberts, from Dad? He's local."

"In Sioux Falls?"

"St. Louis. He's local-ish." His tone is softer, tireder than his actions are. Maybe he's caught in a harness of regret. Maybe a part of you's still Sam. "Go to sleep," he says.

You're not Sam.

"I don't sleep," you admit.

"Oh, you will."

"What?"

"I said, lie down."

You do. Hating the way your body goes dead, you do, and as the hard lines of your vision peel out and curl away from themselves like warped plastic, you do. Your mouth is chalky. With lies, with promises not kept, with you being, you think, unendurably stupid. But Dean was supposed to love you. He was supposed to be the one who knew how to love. He was supposed to understand how this worked. You never thought he'd drug you; you didn't peg him for the type. 

He is the type. 

You know then that this is not the last line he'll cross--for Sam or against him, it doesn't matter. The two have a habit of sidewinding. (Your face is Sam's. He'll never escape that. It's just, as it has always been, easier for him to pretend that it's not. In the end, you are a hitchhiker. Still, he lies to you all the time. It doesn't matter who you are, or who Dean thinks you are. Dean lies to you. You're the closest to Sam he's got and Dean lies to you the most. He doesn't care. He'd lie to Sam a thousand times, and over again.) 

You don't sleep. You dissociate. Your musculature deserts you. Your memories slosh. 

You think about how much Sam had not prepared you for this. You think, he's going to be so surprised when he finds these things out for himself. There's a lot Dean could never do, and does anyway. And one of these days, Sam's going to be just as surprised as you are.

Above you the spider of lines and color that was once Dean says, "Provided this don't go south, I'm gonna bring you back a souvenir. Sit tight."

You're a little bit afraid.

He slaps you on the shoulder, not unkindly. But he's not looking at you. Not _you._

He says, "It's okay. You'll feel better in the morning."

"A' least with me--" you slur.

At least with you, he doesn't need to pretend. Because you're not Sam. You're already not Sam.

 

bar stool dream / anonymous fingerprints / trash metal / and Meg

but Sammy, always Sammy

 

"Hey man, it's gonna be okay," he says.

And he drives six hundred miles into oblivion without you.

**Author's Note:**

> * [An important note on the warnings, content, and objectives](http://kalliel.livejournal.com/266255.html) of this fic.
> 
> * Written for **tebtosca** on behalf of **fandomaid** 's Typhoon Haiyan relief efforts. As extra thanks, bb, I've also given a matching donation [Reach Out Worldwide](http://roww.org). ♥
> 
> * Tremendous thanks to **alexisjane** for beta-reading! Walking someone through their first Sam/Dean fic is no easy task, and she is a rockstar 100%. Any remaining mistakes and wtf are mine.


End file.
